Museum of Classical Archaeology Databases

Head of Menelaos

This is the head of a larger group (known as the Pasquino group, so named after the provenance of one of the other fragments, a shoemaker’s shop in Rome) showing Menelaos dragging the corpse of Patroklos from the battlefields of Troy. There was a vogue around this time for large group sculptures, in this case a pyramidal composition with this head at its top. The helmet is decorated with battle scenes of Herakles fighting centaurs. Group compositions provided more scope for the telling of a story, here a scene from Homer’s Iliad.

Roman copy of a Pergamene original. The flamboyant hair and massive muscles are features of a ‘baroque’ East Greek style, also seen in the Laocoon and the Great Altar of Pergamon